‘Come to Alibaug, but don’t kill us to live here’

One of the many construction sites that have cropped up around Alibaug. Pics/Shadab Khan

The Kundalika river to the south of Alibaug is where siblings Sanjana Patil, 41, and Prasad Gaikwad, 38, learnt the breast-stroke as children. Bobbing among its currents, they competed to see who could hold their breath underwater the longest. In its warm embrace, they learnt how to let go and just float - a luxury they can no longer afford.

Patil and Gaikwad are among a handful of locals fighting to save their hometown which, they say, is undergoing rampant and unregulated urbanisation, especially in the last five years since the ambitious RoRo services were launched in March 2020. For the thousands of people flooding Alibaug every weekend, the beach town is like paradise. For the locals, though, it's quickly turning into a hell ill-equipped to handle the rising tourist figures or the luxury homes mushrooming everywhere. Owning a holiday home in Alibaug was once a flex for the upper middle class and above. But with more people now aspiring to move here, developers are meeting this demand with more affordable matchbox apartments - mimicking Mumbai's housing schemes.

Mumbaikars alighting from a ferry on Monday afternoon

Patil, a member of the Saswane gram panchayat, has been part of an ad-hoc team of first responders on the 19-km stretch between Mandwa jetty and Alibaug city, which lacks a major hospital. The team is forced to take accident victims all the way to Kalamboli hospital. "We do not have a multispeciality hospital that can deal with accident victims. The narrow stretch of road between the jetty and the city is not able to deal with the number of people who descend on our small town from the RoRo," says Patil, walking on the road in her rust-orange saree.

"We do not oppose any development. All we ask is that services like the RoRo not be started before ensuring basic infrastructure is ready - the width of the road needs to be increased and Alibaug needs a facility providing critical medical assistance. And, there are so many flats being built, but there is no water," she adds.

Each RoRo service can accommodate over 120 vehicles and 780 passengers, and there are about four to five services per day during the weekend. While this might be a big achievement for the tourism economy in the coastal hamlet, what it has brought along with it is unbridled urbanisation. "When the RoRo started, we were very happy that more people would visit, and that our people would get jobs and businesses would boom.

Siblings Sanjana Patil and Prasad Gaikwad who grew up in the coastal town are fearful of the rampant development

We did not anticipate the unchecked development, or how much of a free hand real estate developers would get," says Gaikwad, sarpanch of Kihim, one of the most prime real estate areas there. In fact, property rates on the small stretch along Kihim beach are now parallel to those in south Mumbai, Gaikwad tells us.

As we make our way through the siblings' villages, especially Kihim, we begin to understand their concern. Multiple earthmovers line the roads, digging aggressively, while thousands of labourers toil away at one construction site after another, each the size of a cricket stadium.

Luxury housing projects boast of basketball courts, banquet halls and 24x7 water supply. A few kilometres from one of these projects, we encounter Prasad, an Adivasi resident, peering into the village well. "There's been no water in the well for 10 days; I haven't been able to bathe. We are managing food and drinking water from the borewells of fisherfolk and farmer families, but there is no water for other needs," he says.

"Do you know when water will come?" he asks.

One of the wells that has completely dried up with no water for the Adivasi

An overwhelmed Gaikwad tells Prasad that he's trying to procure a tanker by evening. He then turns to us: "This is what we're talking about. We get drinking water twice a week from the zilla parishad supply. The rest we are managing from wells and borewells, we are forced to drill deeper for the latter each year. We need development that benefits everyone, and not just the rich. Come to Alibaug, no problem - but don't kill us in the process. The government needs to make sure that development doesn't come at the cost of the environment or local residents."

Patil and Gaikwad's work seems to be appreciated by residents, who greet the duo with either a smile or nod, sometimes flagging them down for some or the other assistance. While Patil is particular to speak to all the women, Gaikwad takes a few minutes out to answer queries from elderly passersby while juggling calls on his two phones.

Pinakin Patel, an architect who moved to Alibaug 26 years ago, is one of the loudest voices against mindless construction in the city. He fears that Alibaug's infrastructure, or the lack thereof, won't be able to keep pace with the onslaught. "We are okay with flats and homes being built here, and we are not opposed to people moving here either, but there has been absolutely no conversation so far with the stakeholders - fisherfolk and farmers," he says.

Pinakin Patel is an architect and doesn't oppose the urbanisation, but fears the lack of checks and balances

In a first, the 23 sarpanches from the town and a few locals working in social welfare and environmental conservation efforts came together on April 26, and met a zilla parishad representative to air their concerns.

Among those at the meeting was Prachi Deshmukh from the NGO Vidyadan Education Foundation, which has been working to restore depleting water in wells. "We have asked the zilla parishad officials to give us data on local wells. There is usually an annual exercise undertaken by the government where they let the residents know which wells have water safe for consumption, which have dried out and which can be drilled further.
The problem is that we do not have access to this data which could help us maintain the wells better," she says.

As we make our way through dug-up roads, we spot a monkey hanging from a tree branch and slaking its thirst from a talao below. If only it were that easy for the beach town's human residents.

The local youth are just as invested in the town's development, shiny-eyed with hope about the wealth and progress it could bring. On spotting Gaikwad walking about, two cars come to a halt and four to five boys come out to talk to us. Among them is Anshuman Rane, the son of Abhijit Prabhakar Rane, the sarpanch of Awas gram panchayat. The 19-year-old, who is studying at Poddar, is candid about the fact that he wants to make a career in politics. The teenager, bursting with swag, sets his own agenda for our chat: "I want to talk about water, tourism and development. I want to make Alibaug the next south Mumbai and these three things are the cornerstones we need."

Prasad, an Adivasi who says that he hasn't had bath in 10 days due to lack of water

When we ask if he has concerns about the cost to the flora and fauna, he quickly adds, "When I say south Mumbai, I don't mean [development should come] at the cost of our ecology or people. But, we have to understand that people my age need and deserve all the opportunities that the youth who live a 10-minute boat ride away get."

The changes of very quick concretisation on the local biodiversity are incremental, says Aditya Karve, who works with the Bombay Natural History Society in Alibaug. "We are seeing unprecedented landfilling in mangroves. We all know why mangroves are important [for flood prevention] in a town like Alibaug, which is right beside the sea," he says.

"For now, we are seeing very small effects, such as sea water encroaching on areas where we haven't ever seen this before. We will have to wait and watch for the true impact of this urbanisation, but by then it might be too late," he warns.

Currently, there have been breakwaters built near the jetty where passengers board the RoRo services. "The breakwaters are walls built between the beach and the sea so that the RoRo movement doesn't disturb the marine life. As the number of services increase, more breakwaters will have to be constructed. But all that water will have to go somewhere, and it will likely end up in the farmers' fields," says Karve.

In recent years, rice crops near construction sites have been similarly ruined by encroaching sea water, adds Gaikwad. At Kihim beach during high tide, we see waves lapping at the gate of an industrialist's beach bungalow. "This [building so close to the sea] cannot be done under the Coastal Regulation Zone norms, but we don't seem to have any say in these kinds of decisions," says Saswane panchayat member Patil.

Architect Patel points out that the rampant concretisation of the town has coincided with the transfer of powers to issue no-objection certificates (NOC) from the 23 sarpanches to the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority 9MMRDA) eight months ago. "They [MMRDA] have told us that Alibaug comes under a special planning authority, but we do not know who is okaying the land sales. No one is able to tell us which department or official is in charge; we are flying blind here. Right now, the locals are selling their land because they have never seen this kind of money, but there is no mechanism in place to prevent irreversible damage to natural resources," he says.

After a long day speaking to the locals, we find ourselves on plastic chairs on Kihim beach, sipping coconut water - thanking the monkeys for reminding us of the importance of hydration. The beach bears a deserted look, since it's a Monday, but the sea is loud and raging. We can't help but wonder if this is the calm before the storm.

Sunday mid-day reached out to the MMRDA on Wednesday, but did not receive a comment until the edition went to print on Saturday.

Rs 36 lakh
Rate that villagers are getting per guntha of land

Rs 6 lakh
Rate per guntha until a year ago